Posts by richard tanswell

Der Kaiser

Let's hope that Der Kaiser don't do a similar attack for Sir Alex Ferguson's comments recently!

"Typical Romanians"!

Not just Google

Lots of companies do it, my subscription to Microsoft TechNet goes through Ireland too.

Why have taxes anyway? Why don't we just put our earnings into a bank and let them take a 25-40% "tax" themselves. Would be much simpler particularly as most banks are now goverment owned! It would cut costs and clear the cr@p out of Whitehall, makes things simpler and prop the banks up!

Well it's a good idea if the banks weren't so fuck1ng useless!!!!! :)

Hmmmm

Most of the consoles have moving parts (ie hard disks, CD/DVD/BR drives) and can fail at the drop of a hat (literally if the hat was fairly heavy and was dropped on the casing).

Even the smallest of vibration can kill a hard disk or make it degrade slowly, we know this from PC's so why should consoles be any different?

I have a 360 Elite and am very happy with it. My mates have PS3's and a few of them wish they'd gone for 360's.

However, there's not much between the two and I'm sure both are prone to hardware failures, there's more 360's in use out there and they've been around longer and because of the MS haters, stories like this get blown out of proportion.

If MS let the XBox team developed a simple, powerful OS, I'm sure they'd have come up with something much better than Vista, something that worked on less powerful hardware.

I'm proud of my 360 and wouldn't change it for the world right now. Of course nothing has gone wrong with it so I have no experience of support/warranty but as an IT engineer, I've rarely had to call Microsoft for OS/App issues so hopefully I'll have the same experience with my XBox.

I'm sure that in comparison, hardware failures, OS failures and errors are more common on Windows PCs as opposed to the 360's. At least it can be fixed and under the warranty which is more than can be said for many electrical appliances these days like dishwashers, washing machines etc!

Hmmmmm

Now what if you were at an address wthout a TV licence, you were watching the streams on your mobile but were running out of juice so plugged your mobile into your laptop to charge it? Is it legal to do this provided the laptop is not plugged into the mains?

Such a grey area really. Also, what if that "mobile device" being used at home to view telly via wifi took you to over the 4 TV allowance. Illegal again or only until you plug it into the mains?

What about if your neighbour had managed to hijack your wifi and watched BBC over wifi but they didn't have a licence? Are they legal?

I know chances of prosecution are pretty low, how they are ever going to catch someone on any wifi network and prove they had their mobile plugged in but the site had no valid licence is beyond me!

To be honest, BBC's programs are so shite these days that if I am taking a dump, I certainly won't want to be watching BBC over wifi on my mobile. I'd rather play Snake thanks (the phone game, not my penis thank you!)

Maybe wrong but....

Does it really matter about the length of a contract when O2 are the only network in the UK allowed for iPhone? If they dropped it to a year, what would you do after that? As far as I know, you can't take it to another network anyway and it can't be unlocked easily so unless you stayed with O2, the iPhone would be useless! This may have changed of course.

What they need to stop providers doing is charging you to unlock your phone that you have essentially bought (even though it was advertised as being free in the first place) at the end of your contract.

It becomes your phone on contact expiry so why should you have to pay to have it unlocked to work on another network if you choose to move? And it was "free" in the first place so another reason why you shouldn't have to pay! They should be unlocked automatically on the contract finishing!

XBox Team

Why can't MS develop something based on the XBox technology?

It loads quickly, rarely has bugs in my opinion, works for very powerful games, can be shut down quickly, works well online, isn't resource heavy etc etc.

It's made by MS. Surely they can come up with a similar as a workstation? After all, if I want to play games on XP or Vista, my machine has to be extremely fast, have loads of RAM and decent graphics card to work! Probably 10 times the power the XBox has!

Good riddance!

I was with Tiscali once, absolute nightmare!! Service was never great and if you ever wanted to move away from them, boy they make it hard!! Also don't ever try and call them if you need any help or have a query....they never answer and are useless!!

It's sad however that they will take Nildram and Pipex with them. Nildram were a very good company until the takeover...a nice small-ish ISP with good service and customer service. I guess this is what happens when a large ISP offers lots of money to takeover a small ISP!

Vista runs well?

Anyone who says Vista runs well needs their head testing! OK so they may not have any obvious problems but should they really be happy with an OS that uses more than twice the resources XP does, doesn't mind the fact that it decides what to restrict than the user (ie hardware drivers, programs, it's own processes etc) and is just a royal pain in the backside!

I persevered for nearly a year, yes SP1 improved things slightly but the fact is, I was still unable to perform many of the functions and use the hardware/software that I did on XP so in the end, had to revert back to my main OS being XP. I can then run Vista in a VM and test it etc but the simple fact is, I don't have half a day a week to try and troubleshoot my Vista problems and just wanted something stable and did what I wanted to do.

Windows 7 will be exactly the same! As a system admin, there is no way in the world that I would even contemplate rolling out Vista or Windows 7 yet or in the future as XP does all we need it to. Microsoft need to realise that while there is a need for change in some way, Windows users don't care about how their OS looks or feels. It's about performance, flexibilty and reliability! XP gives us this at the moment. Even Excel 2007 causes problems with many financial models so although we like the integration of WSS and Outlook 2007, we will not be upgrading Excel to 2007, just Outlook.

MS need to listen to the masses if they wish to stay alive. It doesn't look like a repackaged version of Vista in Windows 7 will help that! I'm likening Bill Gates to Tony Blair at the moment, jumped ship at the right time!!

Idiot

What sort of knob does something like this from their home computer!!! Oh yeah, he was a member of a help desk! Explains it all really!!!

Now I know what he and Homer Simpson have in common....D'OH!

Similar to the French!

Has anyone ever tried to setup ADSL/SDSL in France, in particular Paris?? No mattr who the ISP is, they tend to royally fuck it up and it takes almost as long as it does for a snail to walk to Paris! Bearing in mind the delay from them eating it on the way!

Bwilliant!

So what happened to free speech? The BBC is funded by the taxpayer in a supposed country of free speech...yet they do not allow their entertainers this freedom! Why are they paying the likes of Woss and Brand all this money if they then tell them what to do???

Am I the only one who actually found what those two did funny? Mr Sachs was rude enough not to turn up on their show after being invited. Brand did indeed previously sh@g Sachs' grand-daughter so he never actually lied about anything!

What's the f*cking g*d D@mn motherf*cking problem with this c*nting government and it's agencies? Britain has lost it's sense of humour, it's banks, it's terrorists have even b*ggered off to India!! Is there anything left for us to enjoy or shall we all just move to Bridgend?

Time for change

If the courts uphold the decision and force WB to change the name, I think that we may end up with a whole new batch of films....

Battyman Begins - this film depicts Battyman's early years and how he grew to like Dick......Grayson

Battyman and Robin (title pending claim from red breasted bird) - Battyman's flick with his sidekick. Also know as when Bruce met Dick

Battyman - The Dark Night - Battyman descends on Soho discovery some very strange, dark alleyways.....His main arch-rival in this film is "The Poker"....played by Brokeback Mountain star Heath Ledger!

Mine's the one with the the Batbelt round the waist!

Not so bad!

I have an N82 and to be honest it's the best Nokia I've ever had!

The old N series phones had a tendency to crash, reboot etc but the newer ones tend to be really good and crash a lot less. N series with Skype + 5mp camera + WiFi + Mail4Exchange = a happy me! Especially as I don't want a large phone or a Blackberry!

Not convinced on touch screen phones though! You can't beat a keyboard for text/mail.

Backs onto a holiday site

I live in Watford, I didn't realise I could holiday there! Wow what a carbon footprint saving I can make!!

I think what they actually mean is "traveller's site" but in a PC way! Now that the "travellers" have damaged their local internet access, how are they going to do their Ebay listings?

Shipwrecked

You can see these guys on Channel 4 on Sunday mornings, the orange is just fake tan. They're all harmless really, in fact many of the men wouldn't be able to use a bow and arrow for fear of breaking a nail!

Or were these pictures taken when Jordan was on I'm a Celebrity? Either way, has their celebrity status now improved to W list? They've reached the BBC websites top stories!

Paris because she's probably sh@gged them all!

Redundancy?

I'm surprised how large companies like this can be down for so long! Have they not heard of redundancy or disaster recovery plans?

When I was in the US last month, international text messaging was down for about 6 days also. Again, the message was: "we apologise and are working on it!".

Since the French took over, the company has really gone down in my estimation. Shame I'm only 2 months into a new 18 month phone contract with them!!

Freeserve were crap, Wanadoo were no better and now Orange are even worse! What next? Alistair Darling will do a Northern Rock and try to save Orange in the same way? Oh dear!

Anyway, as they're French, they probably just shrug their shoulders and just say, OK. Or maybe they'll blame it on the striking fishermen!

....and another thing!

What is the point of User Access Control on a Vista PC on a Business network?

Firstly, any good AV with application control will do the same and secondly, if you want to secure certain functions, you enforce them through a group policy and user groups.

It's Microsoft trying to make visible changes to a system and warrant the upgrade cost when in truth, they are actually useless add-ons already covered by their other products!

Expensive....and doesn't even work properly!

I was on a stag do in Vegas a few weeks ago and suddenly my phone stopped sending texts. I did the usual "reboots" as it was a new phone but it made no difference. A friend also said he had the same problem so I phoned Orange. They said that there was a problem with International Text messaging, they don't know what the problem is but are looking into it as a matter of urgency. Four days later, it started working again! It amazes me how they charge so much for a system with no redundancy/failover/disaster recovery!

Of course, not being able to text my missus on a stag do may have been a blessing in disguise.....because of the time difference of course! ;-)

Going to a match cheaper?

Michael do you support an under 5s team because certainly Premiership and even Championship grounds charge a lot more than a Sky subscription per year when you include travel, burgers, beers, pies etc. And some of us just like to watch other teams play. For example if you're a Man Utd fan, you want to watch Chelsea vs Liverpool etc. So are you saying we should physically go to those games too? I don't think the capacity is there! Which is why Sky et al can charge what they do, they know people will pay for it. Which is why Ofcom should step in and do what's best for consumers. Sometimes lower price is not always best for the consumer, if as in this instance, some of your choice is removed (in this instance with no reduction in price).

I'm sure if I made a comment about how dull/boring/crap online gaming was, there'd be uproar and I'd be banished from the world wide web!

Hull?? @ Anonymous Coward

Quote: "Clearly the best place for installing this is Hull".

How would they tell the difference between the sewers and the streets?? :-)

iTunes et al

So if it is illegal, why does iTunes, WMP etc ask if you want to copy the songs to your computer when you try to play a CD through your CDROM drive?

Surely Apple and Microsoft are just as guilty for offering this "illegal feature"??

They should sort it out with the "Big Guns" and establish a law between them before ganging up on the helpless little guys!

Of course if he is sharing these files then I have no sympathy for him! Maybe British Transport Police should be banging up all of the iPod users on the trains!

@ AC "Sugar Content of biscuits"

True! a Tesco's employee wouldn't be trained to know that and they should therefore refuse to answer the question or tell the buyer to read the info on the packet! That is the manufacturer's responsibility (and a legal one I believe).

My point was that the PC World employees will spout out some bullshit in order to get a sale, no matter if it's what the customer has actually asked. A Tesco's employee would not even entertain this idea!

However, if the diabetic had suffered a relapse because of wrong information a Tesco's employee had given him, there would be a pending lawsuit and at the very least, he wouldn't go back to the store.

With PC World, it's almost a monopoly, people are unaware of online options or do not know where to get advice on their PC so PCW is the only alternative! Again because of it's high visibility and misleading marketing claims!! And independent suppliers with the knowledge and ability to give decent advice and assistance firstly get crap margins from their distributors to work on and therefore can't compete and can't expand or go out of business because of companies like PC World telling everyone how cheap their stuff is!